PATH Vietnam: Tour of Duty · Holistic Hybrid Inc.
You live one soldier’s 365-day tour of duty in Vietnam — 1 August 1967 to 1 August 1968 — with Bravo Company of the 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry (Mechanized), the “Triple Deuce,” out of Dau Tieng. This is not a shooter. It is a life: the long boredom and the sudden terror, the men beside you, the mail from home, and the small choices that turn out not to be small at all. There is no score and no winning — the goal is to get through your tour and find out who you become on the way to the Freedom Bird home. Your choices shape the past.
Every day is four shifts — Dawn, Day, Dusk, Night. A morning event sets the tone; then you choose how to spend your time from the action board. Most days are camp life — a work detail, a watch on the perimeter, writing home, sitting with a squadmate, cleaning your weapon, the PX truck, the radio. Other days the war comes to you: a patrol, a road run in the M113s, a night ambush, a village cordon-and-search. Two set-pieces anchor the tour — the New Year’s-night stand at Fire Support Base Burt, and the Tet Offensive at the midpoint.
You build a full, rules-legal character: four attributes, Coolness Under Fire, and twelve skills, each rated A–D. Your archetype is your job (Grunt, Medic, Engineer, RTO, and more); your background — schooling, hometown, race, family — changes both the sheet and the story. Doing the job earns experience across the year; you sharpen up on your own time back at camp. The mechanics run silently under the fiction — you make the human choice, and the war answers.
Out here a soldier goes down to neglect as fast as to the enemy: eat, sleep, wash, look after your feet, and clean your weapon or it will jam at the worst second. Set your loadout before you deploy — what you carry versus what you leave in the footlocker — because gear only helps while you carry it, and weight is real. Your Field Desk (press D in game) holds your service record, kit, journal, calendar, and the radio.
P.A.T.H.: Vietnam is a work of historical fiction for mature audiences. It is loosely based on documented events — real units, dates, places, weapons, and battles, drawn from the record — but the soldier you play, the men beside you, and their stories are invented, and the telling takes creative liberties. No real casualty is named or portrayed. Where a real man’s deed inspired a scene, the character who lives it is fictional. It does not glorify war. We honor all who served there — American, Vietnamese, and allied — and the civilians whose lives were changed forever.
If this game — or your own life — raises something heavy: in the U.S., the Veterans Crisis Line answers 24/7 — dial 988, then press 1, or text 838255. Stack Up (stackup.org) supports service members and gamers. Wherever you are, a crisis line is there. You are not alone.
P.A.T.H. is driven by human creativity — the vision, the writing, the design, and the judgment are human. Artificial intelligence, software, and other tools supported the work at every stage: development and code validation, security auditing, historical research, and testing. An original, historically inspired work of fiction. The game runs on the PATH System — our own step-die rules engine.